The Grudge

Middle Earth Online vs. The Matrix Online

Fargo: This week we're pitting two HUGE license-based massively-multiplayer online RPGs against one another: The Matrix Online and Middle Earth Online. Both games were just announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles -- but you already knew that, because you've been reading our extensive coverage. Thousands of pages of it. It's enough to make your monitor bleed.

shaithis: I don't understand this whole, "make anything massively multiplayer and it's automatically cool" deal. Middle Earth? It's a neat world and all, but how many Aragorns are there in Middle Earth? That's right, ONE. Everybody else is just one of those computer-generated dudes in armor who get killed by the boatload in every fight scene. What fun is that?

Fargo: You know, you and I could sit here and rationally argue the merits or problems of either game like intelligent adults. But I'd rather leave that discussion to the Forums. Instead, I think it's more fun to imagine if characters from Middle Earth Online actually had to fight it out in The Matrix.

shaithis: Now THAT I would pay money for. How great would it be to see that pretty-boy Elf get worked over by an Agent like it's the last scene of a Rocky movie?

Fargo: It would go down something like this: Agent Smith would sit down and open up a big manilla folder. "We've been camping this ringspawn for ... quite some time now, Mr. Baggins." He'd say. Then he'd talk about the ring, and then he'd threaten him: "One of these lives has a future, Mr. Baggins. And in that future, you will be trying to recover the corpse of your other life."

shaithis: Yeah, yeah that's good! But then we'd need to show a bullet-time shot of Gimli the Dwarf, hovering five feet in the air with a slow motion kick. And he'd say, "Dodge this!" But he'd say it in a bad Scottish accent, because -- I guess Dwarves are Scottish.